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Havana, December 17, 2007.
Dear Randy:
I
listened to the entire Round Table programme on
Thursday the 13th, without missing
one single second of it. The news about the Bali
Conference, commented on by Rogelio Polanco, the
Director of the newspaper "Juventud Rebelde",
confirms the importance of the international
agreements and the necessity of taking them very
seriously.
On that small island of Indonesia, there was a
meeting of many Heads of Government of countries
of the so-called Third World; they are fighting
for their development and they demand fair
treatment, financial resources and transferrals
of technology from the representatives of
industrialized nations which are also being
represented there.
The UN Secretary General, faced with the
tenacious obstruction by the United States in
the midst of the 190 representatives meeting
there, and after twelve days of negotiations,
stated on Friday the 14th, Cuban
time, when it was already Saturday in Bali, that
the human species could disappear as a result of
climate change. And then he went off to East
Timor.
That declaration transformed the conference into
a shouting match. On the twelfth day of
pointless persuasive efforts, the American
representative Paula Dobriansky, after sighing
deeply, said: "We join the consensus." It is
obvious that the United States made moves to get
around its isolated position, even though it
didn’t change the empire’s dismal intentions one
iota.
The grand show began: Canada and Japan attached
themselves immediately to the American
coat-tails, facing the rest of the countries
that were demanding serious compromises on the
emissions of gases that are causing the climatic
change. Everything had been foreseen ahead of
time between the NATO allies and the powerful
empire which, in one fell swoop of deceit,
agreed to negotiate during 2008 in Hawaii, U.S.
territory, for a new convention project that
would be presented and approved at the
Copenhagen Conference in Denmark in 2009; this
would take the place of the Kyoto Protocol which
is due to expire in 2012.
The theatrical solution was reserved for Europe
in the role of saviour of the world. Brown
spoke, as did Merkel and other leaders of the
European countries, requesting international
gratitude. What an excellent present for
Christmas and the New Year! None of the
eulogists mentioned the tens of millions of poor
people who go on dying of diseases and hunger
each year given the complex realities of the
present, just as if we were living in the best
of all worlds.
The Group of 77, which includes 132 countries
that are struggling to develop themselves had
achieved consensus to demand from the
industrialized countries a reduction of the
gases that cause climatic change, for the year
2020, from 20 to 40% lower than the level
attained in 1990, and from 60 to 70% in the year
2050, something which is technically possible.
Furthermore, they were demanding the assigning
of sufficient funds for the transferral of
technology to the Third World.
We cannot forget that those gases give way to
heat waves, desertification, the melting of the
glaciers and the increase of the levels of the
seas which could cover entire countries or a
large part of them. The industrialized nations
share with the United States the idea of
converting foods into fuels for luxury cars and
the other wasteful practices of the consumer
societies.
All of this that I am stating was demonstrated
when on that very Saturday, December 15th,
at 10:06 Washington time, it was announced that
the President of the United States had asked the
Senate, which had then approved it, for 696
billion dollars for the military budget for the
2008 fiscal year; in this amount, 189 billion
was ear-marked for the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
A
feeling of sound pride came over me as I
remembered the dignified and calm way in which I
responded to the hurtful proposals directed to
me in 1998 by the then Canadian Prime Minister
Jean Chrétien. I harbour no illusions.
My most profound conviction is that the answers
to the current problems of Cuban society which
possesses an average educational level close to
Grade 12, almost a million university graduates
and the real possibility for its citizens to
become educated with no discrimination
whatsoever, require more varieties of answers
for each concrete problem than those contained
on a chess board. We cannot ignore one single
detail, and we are not dealing with an easy
path, if the intelligence of a human being in a
revolutionary society truly needs to prevail
over instinct.
My fundamental duty is not to cling to
positions, much less to stand in the way of
younger persons, but it is to bring experience
and ideas whose modest value comes from the
exceptional era that I had the privilege of
living in.
Like Niemeyer, I believe that one has to be
consistent right up to the end.
(Signed) Fidel Castro Ruz
(Handwritten)
Please include this letter in the Round Table
programme that is announced today to be about
Bali.
F. C.
5:16 p.m.
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